FOOD FRAUD ALERT - What the Heck are We Eating These Days?
In the spirit of my previously-published "Let's Keep Our Leaders Accountable" and Lorins "Food Healthfulness Quotient (FHQ)" articles, let us ask ourselves the following question with a bit of frustration and even anger, "WHAT THE HECK ARE WE EATING THESE DAYS?".
What is a "FRAUD"?
According to most legal and well-accepted defintion of fraud, a fraud is a "is deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain. Fraud is both a civil wrong (i.e., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud and/or recover monetary compensation) and a criminal wrong (i.e., a fraud perpetrator may be prosecuted and imprisoned by governmental authorities)."
What is "FOOD FRAUD"?
Food fraud is historically defined as "the deliberate substitution, addition, tampering or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients or food packaging, or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain". We will not even mention the effects of additives in these foods (e.g., cancer) as this will necessitate a seperate article. However, consumers have a right to know what they are paying for and certainly a right to know about the true integrity of the foods that they buy.
So, in this case, why aren't most food entities/leaders being sued either civilly for private wrongs to compensate their victims who rely on their misrepresentations to their detriment, and also, why aren't they being prosecuted and imprisoned by government authorities for a "crime" (public wrong) since many of them are clearly comitting food frauds by knowingly misrepresenting the content of their foods? Well, you can guess the answer.
Many of them have connections inside these entities, just like Bernie Maddoff must have had at the SEC. These connections help them thwart any potential government prosecution, and most civil cases are either settled out of court or are so cost-prohibitive that most lawyers (or law firms) don't have the resources or know-how or enough understanding of both science and law concurrently to take them on. The end result is that, you as the consumers are the victims. Thus, you have to be responsible for your own health because the people who should be accountable for your health either will not utter anything unless the medical issues become so obvious. THus, if you determine that you're still not healthy despite your reliance on the contents of products that should keep you healthy, , unless you have a non-nutrition related issue (e.g., genetic issue) perhaps it is time to sue these companies for selling FRAUDULENT FOODS. And yet perhaps, the government leaders will also be forced to follow your lead as to not appear to be "unaccountable".
As a young boy, I would often hear my parents, and other elders say things like "you are what you eat". I recall that everything used to come from the local farmers. I mean "everything". But today, things have changed immensely, and if we are what we eat, some of us been been eating "GARBAGE" because that's nearly what a great percentage of our bodies have been slowly becoming, "complex and toxic drug-dependent garbage". Have you seen the bodies of some of the people that you encounter on a daily basis noawdays. Just think of 30 years back. Well not even that far, how about two decades. The bottom line is that good food from the above-mentioned groups should make us feel great, and healthy and provide with most if not all necessary nutrients. Thus, if that's not the case, unless you have a genetic problem or are infected with some kind of viruses or bacteria or other agents, you can safely deduce that you're eating FRAUDULENT FOODS.
WHO SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
You know how they are already, food entity leaders, agencies like the U.S Fodd and Drug Administration (FDA) and similar entities worldwide have been entrusted with the duty of ensuring that food entities can back up their claim, else face prosecutoin or fines. if we do a review of my previously-written article entitled "Let's Keep Our Leaders Accountable (LKOLA)", we will, then, find out this is, exactly, where the blame game begins. However, both "LKOLA" and the "FHQ" test arms us with enough tool to objectively test the integrity of the foods that we ingest these days, and if they are deemed to be FRAUDULENT, We should keep the leaders who have the duty to protect us ACCOUNTABLE!
According to the FHQ test, we need to eat a good percentage of the 'Major Food Groups' and/or the 'Top 10 Healthful Groups' in order to remainly relatively healthy (i.e., so that our body can maintain a state of internal balance/homeostatis despite being exposed to many external threats.) The major food groups are: (1) fruits and vegetables; whole grains; and milk and milk Products; and the top 10 healthful groups are: (1) Lemons/Oranges etc., (2) Broccoli, (3) Cocoa, (4) Potatoes, (5) Salmon, (6) Walnuts, (7) Avocados, (8) Garlic, (9) Spinach, and (10) Beans. But please check the "Food Halthfulness Quotient (FHQ)" article to see details on each of these 10 top top 10 groups.
MOST COMMON FOOD FRAUDS
If you are a consumer, according to mercola.com, you should watch out for the follow top 10 most common fraudulent foods:
1. Olive Oil
Even "extra virgin" olive oil is often diluted with other less expensive oils, including hazelnut, soybean, corn, sunflower, palm, sesame, grape seed and walnut.
2. Milk
Milk was found to contain vegetable oil, whey, caustic soda, cane sugar, detergent and even toxic compounds like melamine and formaldehyde.
3. Honey
Honey is often not "honey" but instead a mix of high-fructose corn syrup, sucrose syrup, invert beet sugar, water and essential oils.
4. Saffron
It's the world's most expensive spice, but it often contains adulterants such as glycerin, sandalwood dust, tartrazine (yellow dye), barium sulfate, borax, marigold flowers and even colored corn strings.
5. Orange Juice
Lemon juice, sugar water, paprika extract, marigold flower extract, and a synthetic sugar/acid mixture may all be lurking in your favorite orange juice.
6. Coffee
Coffee, whether ground or instant, is a likely source of hidden "ingredients" like roasted corn, ground parchment, barley, coffee twigs, potato flower, malt, chicory and caramel.
7. Apple Juice
This childhood favorite may contain corn syrup, raisin sweetener, malic acid, beet sugar and other juices, such as grape, pineapple, pear and fig.
8. Tea
Hiding inside your tea bag may be sand, sawdust, starch, China clay, used tea leaves and color additives. Some tea bags, meanwhile, are made with plastic, such as nylon, thermoplastic, PVC or polypropylene. While these plastics have high melting points, the temperature at which the molecules in polymers begin to break down is always lower than the melting point, which could allow the bags to leach compounds of unknown health hazards into your tea when steeped in boiling water. Even paper tea bags are frequently treated with epichlorophydrin, which hydrolyzes to 3-MCPD when contact with water occurs. 3-MCPD is a carcinogen associated with food processing that has also been implicated in infertility and suppressed immune function.
9. Fish
Seafood fraud is actually very widespread, as according to the nonprofit ocean protection group Oceana,4 nearly 60 percent of fish labeled "tuna" in the US is not actually tuna. A shocking 84 percent of "white tuna" sold in sushi venues was actually escolar, a fish associated with acute and serious digestive effects if you eat just a couple of ounces. One-third of all fish samples tested across the US were found to be mislabeled, substituted for cheaper, less desirable and/or more readily available fish varieties. For instance, 87 percent of fish sold as snapper was actually some other type of fish, and the USP found that monkfish was sometimes actually puffer fish, which can also cause poisoning.
10. Black Pepper
This spice is often adulterated with juniper berries, papaya seeds, starch, buckwheat flour and millet seeds.
Other foods that made frequent appearances in the fraudulent food database include:
Turmeric
Chili powder
Cooking oil Shrimp
Lemon juice
Maple syrup
AVOIDING FOOD FRAUDS -- FINDING SAFE & HEALTHFUL FOODS
Most food experts would agree on the assertion that the best way to prevent yourself from becoming a victim of food fraud is by acquiring your produce, meat, chickens and eggs from smaller organic farms with free-ranging animals that are organically-fed and locally-marketed. Remember that prior to the advent of monopolizing entities, the latter is the way food had been cultivated and distributed for centuries. The closer your foods are to the way that they were meant to be naturally found in nature and the closer you are to the actual food source, the higher your probability of finding pure, unadulterated food will be. If the food is being grown by a local farmer, you can investigate its genesis (e.g., growing conditions). Otherwise, you're taking big chances and can potentially be consuming faudulent foods that are often disease or illness producing.
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This article was written by Pete Lorins and sponsored by www.RapidGigsPlus.com.
Dr. Lorins is the Senior editor at LORINSPOST.com All concerns/inquiries of feedbacks
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